


You've Been Around

by karaokegal



Category: 20th Century CE Musician RPF, 20th Century CE RPF
Genre: M/M, RPF, Slash, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 04:11:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8875456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karaokegal/pseuds/karaokegal
Summary: "Baby, be good, do what you should, you know it will be alright."





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Joanne_c](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joanne_c/gifts).



> Partially inspired by [this moment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJhswat9S50), and by a passion for the pairing. Big love to recipient, to my awesome beta, [Topaz_Eyes](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Topaz_Eyes/pseuds/Topaz_Eyes) and my whole support system.

“Hey man!”

The voice on the phone never failed to make David smile, even if the grin was destined to turn into a grimace, depending on the next few words. That was life with Lou. Always a mystery to be solved, an adventure to follow, or a disaster to be averted. Sometimes all three in an afternoon.

He hadn’t been smoking much lately, but hearing just two words in Lou’s distinctive growl made him reach for the pack of Dunhills that he hadn’t quite forgotten about in the desk drawer. 

“Lou,” he said, softly. Waiting. Wondering. Worrying. 

“You healthy these days?”

Songwriters of some renown; they played games with words when talking to each other. “Healthy,” for instance, did not mean Lou was inquiring after the possibility of a cold acquired in the dampness of a British summer or a muscular pain from jogging around Central Park in fall. It meant was he clean, which in itself was a moving target. When you’d been where they had, so far deep into smack or coke that death was just another chum waiting to take you home, then how can you condemn a man for a friendly joint or a well-chosen Sauvignon Blanc? 

If Lou was asking about David’s health, it might mean his own wasn’t so good. Lou wasn’t much for the white wine to accompany pan-fried scallops and grilled asparagus. His glass would have something a lot stronger than wine and he’d never stopped at a glass or a single joint or a single anything. Or he might be genuinely worried. Beneath the sunglasses and leather, he was a wounded soul who got in trouble by loving too much. 

“I’m fine.” 

“I mean you looked good at Freddy’s tribute. Saw you up there on your knees. Made me think of old times.”

Right. He’d been asking for it, he supposed and just because there’d been two months of madness since then, including a wedding and a rather large riot, didn’t mean he was off the hook. 

Lou had never thought much of David’s interest in spirituality, and he had a point, at least back in the day. A junkie has one god: the drugs, and David had certainly been there, on his knees, begging for freedom from the pain, in the form of the next fix. Lou had his own troubled relationship with religion, going back to his childhood. He might have been willing to hear a message couched in Buddhism or Hindu iconography, but there was no way to drag the big G “God” into the conversation and have Lou want any part of it. 

Lou was, by some stroke of providence, still alive, more than he could say for Freddy and so many others. David’s prayer at Wembley hadn’t exactly been spontaneous, but it had been heartfelt. He wasn’t trying to impose religion on anybody, but leave it to Lou to take it that way. Or imply that his looking good meant he was falling apart again. 

“I was just saying goodbye.” 

“Yeah, and I’m just saying hello. Feeling a little defensive? I said you looked _good_. Do you want to get together?”

Another code word with multiple meanings. Getting together might mean genuinely hanging out, walking around the Village, enjoying each other’s company, maybe even working on a song or two, or just taking the piss out of the new generation of posers. Or it could mean something else entirely. 

“Where are you?” 

This was the crucial question. David supposed he should thank those lunatics in Los Angeles for preventing him from going house hunting. He wouldn’t have minded something further north, Big Sur, perhaps, but Los Angeles was truly the Belly of the Beast. Just a few weeks in a hotel room there had made him want to prowl the Sunset Strip and West Hollywood. Luckily he was still steeped in newlywed bliss and kept out of trouble by fear of what lay within him, but to live there, no matter how much Iman wanted it, was truly unthinkable. The night they flew back to New York, he promised her a home anywhere else in the world and maybe she felt him tremble a bit. Now they had people looking at properties in Switzerland and Australia and he supposed he’d always keep something in the UK, revolting as the tax situation was. 

“Where do you think I am? Fucking Paterson or something?” 

Perhaps it was a foolish question. Lou was in New York. Lou WAS New York. Even when they didn’t see each other for years, as long as David was in New York, Lou would be here and they would get together. 

Iman was visiting friends in Nice. They’d never talked about Lou, or any of the others for that matter. She didn’t want to make Angie’s mistake of trying to pretend she was OK with it and finding out the hard way she wasn’t. She also didn’t want to be humiliated. Fair enough, he supposed. Not that his new wife didn’t have her own streak of crazy, but he was in love with her and he’d promised her discretion. 

He had time booked with Niles at the Hit Factory, but that was later tonight, much later. A nice afternoon shag could do wonders for the old creativity, he thought, putting out the cigarette. 

“Right then. Come on over.” 

“Twenty minutes.”

Or possibly an hour. Enough time for second thoughts and then third. It had been quite awhile. Years, perhaps. Although the other kind of getting together had still happened as well, sometimes when they weren’t honestly very healthy. He half-remembered a coke-fueled LA weekend in the mid-80’s. Amazing what you could get away with when MTV was footing the bill.

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

Too late. The doorman called to verify that a “Mr. Reed” was indeed expected. The Prosecco was chilled; the bed was ready, if they got as far as the bed. Some music perhaps? He briefly considered late-period Roxy, but Lou and Bryan had never got on, despite mutual admiration on the professional level. Given their respective commitments to persona, it was almost inevitable that Bryan would consider Lou a lout, and Lou would feel that Bryan was a hopeless snob. Not that either one was a hundred percent wrong. 

The safe choice was clearly the first Weather Report album, and that was the last safe thing that happened that afternoon.

Lou walked in like he owned the place, like he owned David, and within seconds, David’s idea of light-hearted love-making had been crushed by a thoroughly needy, punishing kiss. 

Leather, leather everywhere. Lou was healthy all right. Muscled, as only a man who plays guitar like his life depends on it can be in the arms, taut at the midsection, and if his eyes were older and more melancholy, it was so they could look into David’s soul and remind him that no matter what game he was playing publically, gay, bi or catch me if you can, he’d always need this. 

Sweet surrender it was, and his white shirt and tan slacks were stripped off with supreme efficiency. He lost his grip on the narration at that point, which was the whole point of sex with Lou. It was the loss of the control. They’d been insane together, whether in the studio or on a hotel room floor surrounded by candles and groupies, but with cocks and mouths only for each other. 

“Let’s see you pray now. On your knees.”

Harsh whispered words worked their way straight to David’s cock and the roughness of Lou’s calloused fingers on the back of his neck, reminded him exactly who was in charge here. 

He closed his eyes and breathed it all in, the pure unholy raunchiness of it. The filth he’d found in dark alleys and the streets of his soul. The fantasy come to life. Wanting to gag, wanting to stop, knowing he couldn’t and he wouldn’t. Only Lou could treat him this way; only Lou could make him want to be treated this way. The others he controlled, especially Mick. With Lou, there was no control….he could show up at any time, make David do anything,

“Come on, honey….”

Lou was coaxing, cajoling, wanting more, wanting David to take him deeper. He could. He would. Push himself to the limit. Was he crying? Was it bliss or pain? It didn’t matter. The knees were hurting now. Maybe that was the point, and still Lou had the supreme control to ease him off and lead the action to the bed. 

Not that it was any more comfortable there. 

“Look at me!”

No hiding. He could lose himself in sex, but he still had to look into those eyes, and see himself reflected there. The lubricant was cool against his ass, but Lou wasn’t here to be gentle, not yet. He was here to get off, get loose, get down, get David to open himself up in every way. Legs spread wide, facing Lou, so beautiful, like a statue really. David had put on so many faces for the world, but Lou was always Lou. 

David groaned, pushing himself against the force that was coming into him, feeling the burn, the pain, remembering how bad things could be when they did this on drugs and how he’d cried with relief and shame that first time they did it clean and how none of it mattered because Lou was in him now and it felt great. 

“You’re a fucking machine,” he grunted, maybe laughing a little at the double meaning, and the relief and release he anticipated. 

“Metal Machine Music, baby! Ride me, you motherfucker.”

David complied, ignoring, if not completely relishing the vulgarity, taking the order to the limit, until Lou seized back the control and repositioned for the finale, panting and gasping and continuing an obscene tirade, nearly slamming Davd into the bed. The stamina, the power overwhelmed him. Heaven and hell melded into the sounds of screaming as they both came in tortured waves of delicious shuddering orgasm. 

He came back to the world, cradled in Lou’s arms, his face pressed in Lou’s roughly hairy chest. The aura of something out of a John Rechy novel contrasted with the strong caress and tenderness in Lou’s voice. 

“You okay, man?”

David barely had the energy to shrug. He hoped he’d be able to sing later. He considered calling Niles to cancel, but figured he’d made some great music with exactly this feeling. Why not tonight? 

“Not bad for two old farts,” Lou commented, snuggling against the thoroughly spent David. 

“Speak for yourself,” he murmured, and without actually meaning for the words to be spoken out loud, “I missed you.”

“Bullshit. You ran off and got married. Then you got married again. In a fucking church.” 

“It’s hardly like I left you at the altar.”

“Everyone leaves eventually. Andy, Freddy, Rita, Doc.”

David didn’t have an answer. Lou was definitely going through a phase of losses. He understood the sorrow, but it wasn’t the place he wanted to dwell. The music he had in mind right now was alive, even celebratory. He suspected that’s why Lou was a better lyricist; he was willing to run the demons right into the ground, no matter how he had to do it. David knew his gift was different. That Ivor Novello award wasn’t as ludicrous as it had once seemed. He could come up with a catchy melody when he wanted to, and he was starting to feel the urge again. A few urges actually. He smiled to himself.

Lou was somewhere in his own head, but still had the energy to let his fingers play over David’s lower back, massaging out some of the knots with those strong hands. David considered inviting him into the studio tonight, but held back. Even if Lou was healthy, maybe even healthier than David was, it was a step backwards and towards the old chaos that he didn’t necessarily want to take. Besides, a part of Lou would be going with him anyway. 

He had some lyrics that didn’t get used with Tin Machine, and felt especially applicable at the moment.  


_It's the nature of being. It's too many lonely nights. I can't tell bad from wrong. I can’t pass you by._

They would be the perfect tribute to his old friend and lover. 

And no one would ever know, but him.


End file.
